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ASCII File Format Guidelines for Earth Science Data

Summary

This document lists recommended practices for formatting and describing American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) encoded data files, such that the files will be self-describing and adhere to common conventions.

Status

The ASCII File Format Guidelines for Earth science data was recommended for use in NASA Earth science data systems in 2016.

NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Standards Office (ESO) ASCII File Format List contains a list of formats that have been evaluated with respect to these guidelines.

NASA Earth Science Community Recommendations for Use

Strengths

These guidelines address a number of common-sense practices that can make data files encoded in ASCII more widely useful. The recommendations were developed by a community of users from NASA's ESDS community. The guidelines are meant to inform teams of basic practices that will provide for greater interoperability among systems that use data encoded in ASCII.

Weaknesses

This document is meant to provide a checklist approach to be able to test whether a particular format meets the guidelines. As such, it is not possible to provide an exhaustive enumeration of practices that must be done or must be avoided.

Applicability

This document provides a reference to determine whether ASCII data conventions developed by various Earth science communities meet minimum guidelines. Further, the guidelines in this document can inform creators and users of any ASCII-encoded data about whether their data files meet a minimum and necessary set of requirements.

Limitations

The guidelines in this document were developed by a small group of ASCII data producers and consumers. It is likely that there are established ASCII data formats and practices in existence that are viable but don’t meet all of these guidelines.